Paule Marshall was a renowned African American writer born in 1929 in Brooklyn, New York to Barbadian immigrant parents. As a young girl she was an avid reader and changed her name to Paule at age 12 after being inspired by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. She worked as a librarian and journalist before publishing her first novel Brown Girl, Brownstones in 1959 which explored themes of West Indian immigration and racism. Throughout her career she published several acclaimed novels and short story collections that examined issues of race, gender, and cultural identity through the lens of the African American and Caribbean American experience.
3.
Daughter of second-generation Barbadian
immigrant parents Samuel and Ada Burke
Born in Brooklyn in 1929
As a young girl, Paule Marshall was a voracious
reader
Smitten with the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, she
changed her given name from Pauline to Paule
(with a silent e) when she was 12 or 13
4.
librarian for the New York Public Library
a research assistant
full-time journalist, for the once very influential
African American magazine Our World (1955–
1956). Her writing assignments would take her
to parts of the Caribbean and South America
5.
Married her first husband, Kenneth Marshall, in
1957
In 1958, she gave birth to her first and only child,
Evan-Keith
Divorced in 1969
Married Nourry Menard in 1970
Grandmother of two
6.
Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959)
Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961)
The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969)
Reena and Other Stories (1983)
Praisesong for the Widow (1983)
Daughters (1991)
The Fisher King (2001)
Triangular Road (2009)
8.
Brownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic
sandstone which was once a popular building
material. The term is also used in the United
States to refer to a terraced house (row-house)
clad in this material.
Owning a brownstone was, and still is, a West
Indian milestone for becoming American.
